Beyond the Great Divide: Hollywood and Relations in the 1950s

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Beyond the Great Divide: Hollywood and Relations in the 1950s

This article examines the ways in which the production of the racially charged film No Way Out (1950) was influenced by specific sociohistorical events of the postwar period. It begins by establishing the historical context in which the film was produced and goes on to discuss how 3 major events, the nation’s growing housing shortage, the increase in race riots, and the subsequent rise of suburbia, coalesced to produce a provocative yet conservative cinematic expression of racial prejudice. The article concludes by calling for additional analyses of the complex relationship between the filmmaking process and the larger social environment

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Keywords film history, film production, housing, race, social history, surburbia.